Möwe sails on her second cruise

On 23 November 1916 the German auxiliary cruiser Möwe set out on her second cruise into the Atlantic. She was again commanded by Korvettenkapitän Nikolaus zu Dohna-Schlodien, the hero of the first expedition at the turn of 1915 and 1916. The date of 23 November is given by most lists. The British official history of the war at sea and German studies, however, write that Möwe slipped out into the North Sea as early as 22 November, while the British chronology of the war places her departure from Kiel only under 26 November. For many days the British did not know that the ship was already at sea.

Three raiders against shipping

This time Möwe did not sail alone. According to the British official history, written by Henry Newbolt, in the autumn of 1916 the German command decided to send several disguised raiders onto the distant trade routes. The expeditions were planned for a month or two before the expected start of unrestricted submarine warfare. Raiders on distant oceans were to draw there British cruisers that might otherwise protect shipping in the waters around the British Isles. Möwe was to operate in the Atlantic. About a week after her the disguised freighter Wolf of Captain Karl August Nerger put to sea, bound for the Indian Ocean, and in December the sailing ship Seeadler of Count Felix von Luckner, who had earlier served in Möwe under Dohna.

After returning from her first cruise Möwe underwent a refit at Wilhelmshaven, and in the summer, under the assumed name Vineta, she made several short sorties into the Kattegat. According to German studies, when she set out on her second cruise she was covered at a distance by the submarines U 58, UC 29 and UC 30 as far as the coast of Norway. Dohna does not quote his orders in his account. He writes only that he surrounded the departure with the strictest secrecy.

Through the blockade

The British expected such attempts. The Admiralty and the commander of the Grand Fleet, John Jellicoe, had prepared standing orders under which cruisers were to occupy all the exits from the North Sea as soon as word came that a raider was at sea. Newbolt admits, however, that the British never knew the date of departure of any of the raiders to within a week, and it was precisely this that saved them.

Möwe’s route across the North Sea cannot be reconstructed exactly. According to the British official history the raider sailed in very bad weather along the eastern side of the sea, off the coast of Norway, and turned west roughly in the latitude of the Faroe Islands. The long winter nights and the storms helped her to evade the British patrols, just as a year earlier, when she set out on her first cruise. By 30 November she was already in the open Atlantic, heading south.

The most successful raid

On 2 December, roughly halfway between Ireland and Newfoundland, Möwe stopped and sank her first victim, the British refrigerated ship Voltaire. In the following weeks, on the North American routes, she sank among others the freighters Mount Temple and Georgic, which between them were carrying almost two thousand horses for the armies fighting in France. She sent the captured Yarrowdale with prisoners to Germany, where she was converted into another raider, and she armed Saint Theodore and used her as the auxiliary raider Geier. She then moved to the central and South Atlantic.

The second cruise lasted until March 1917. In that time Möwe sank or captured, according to the most commonly cited lists, 25 ships totalling more than 120,000 tons. It was the most successful raid by a German auxiliary cruiser in the First World War. On 22 March 1917 the ship returned safely to Kiel, and Dohna’s account of the second cruise sold in Germany in an even larger edition than the previous one.